WHEAT GROWING

Taranaki Daily News, 13 June 1932, Page 12

WHEAT GROWING

KING COUNTRY MAORIS. WAIPA VALLEY INDUSTRY. The success of a native farmer, Hurore Moerua, Hangatiki, has led to a revival of interest in wheat growing in the King Country. In the ’7o’s and ’Bo’s of the last century the whole valley of the Waipa was under wheat cultivation, from Otewa, where in earlier days Te Kooti grew wheat, and where to-day natives are proposing to again grow wheat, down to Te Kopua, near Pirongia, and all around Otorohanga. In the old. days the wheat was taken by canoes down the Waipa River to Whatawhata to be milled, and the flour was poled back by canoe, the poles sometimes sticking in the mud and later infesting the streams with willows.

Wheat was brought down the Mangapu Stream to its junction with the Waipa at Otorohanga, from Te Kumi, near Te Kuiti. Later on wheat was ground at Te Awamutu, and proposals for erecting a mill at Otorohanga got as far as the importation of parts of expensive machinery, which were allowed to rust away on the banks of the Ora.hiri stream, about half a mile above the town.

The natives employed to gather the wheat worked for their food, and did not ask for anything else. , Lack of communal interest led to the gradual abandonment of wheat growing, and then dairying came in. The native community are being canvassed to grow wheat again, and there is some prospect of several hundred acres being devoted to wheat.